What The Big Switch & Airtricity Don’t Advertise
April 22, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Yesterday I posted about how Airtricity and how they take €200 off new customers at sign up. I was a bit miffed about that, so I looked to the Big Switch.
As there is no information about customer entry fees on the Big Switch website either, I telephoned and found out that Bord Gais Energy also charge a switching fee. In fact, they have a matrix that helps them determine what that fee should be.
- If you’re already a Bord Gais customer and you are a tenant – you pay €100
- If you’re already a Bord Gais customer you’re a tenant living at your address less than 14 months – you pay €200
- If you’re a home owner living at your home less than 14 months – you pay €200.
The reason they say is because tenants have a habit of skipping off without paying their electricity bills. Fair enough. But what about a new home owner already beleagured with multiple costs? They’re hardly going to skip off.
- How long does Bord Gais get to sit on your money? 6 – 7 bills.
- That’s about 14 months of interest-free cash from you. Nice one.
Now this is all regular business practice I’m told.
But what I find highly irregular is the fact that Bord Gais do not advertise any of this on their website.
The Big Switch says nothing, nowhere, not even in the terms and conditions which I read. Nor does the Bord Gais mothership site. The first time you find out about this fee is when you’ve already done the switch (or so you thought) and you get a demanding letter in the post.
This is not how we do things on the web.
We give people full information as early as possible – so as not to waste their time and piss them off. Good sites show the full price (including shipping) as early as possible because that is the way things are done.
I take issue with Web Factory again because they ought to know this. OK, maybe they were a bit afraid to bring it up with their important client Bord Gais? But hey, the guys at Bord Gais ought to know this. They’re currently shortlisted as best internet marketers in the Net Visionary Awards. Is this how you’d expect such esteemed people to behave?
Either way people, if you are planning on switching from ESB to either Bord Gais or Airtricity, you WILL have to pay for the privilege if you don’t want to give away your bank account direct debit details. Suddenly big fat utility co ESB looks more attractive….
Tags: Airtricity, Bord Gais Networks, ESB, The Big Switch
What I Don’t Like About Airtricity
April 21, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Their customer entry fee of €300.
I decided to go the green route and chose Airtricity as my electricity supplier. I felt noble as I passed over the 1.26 cent saving I could have gotten with Bord Gais.
But a big fail for the Airtricity website – and I’ll be interested to see if they are half as switched on as their newest competitors in their response to this.
I filled in all the required details, got all my bits of paper together for the MPRN number, even took a meter reading, then I got to the last stage “how do I wish to pay”. I don’t like giving companies I don’t know free reign to grab what they want out of my bank account, so the direct debit route was a no-no. But Airtricity obviously don’t like giving service to customers they don’t know either – because they demand a €300 deposit off me in order to become a customer.
And the language? Who wrote that?
They will give me back my deposit ‘in due course’. What is that about? Why don’t they communicate clearly why they are asking for a deposit and when I will get it back. If they stated at one of the earlier steps that they would be making this charge and why, I would have continued. But they didn’t. So now me and my huge electricity habit have pushed off.
